Reforms to the US flagship renewable fuels programme have been stalled indefinitely, as pressure from lawmakers in corn growing states scuppered an EPA plan that they feared would hit demand for ethanol.

A Dutch court will next week rule on whether Cofco International acted legally when it seized the bank accounts, art collections and property belonging to the former owners of Nidera – a soft commodities and biofuels trader it bought outright in 2017 – amid allegations of improper accounting.

The US Commerce Department has increased what were already punitive anti-dumping duties on biodiesel imports from Argentina and Indonesia, effectively blocking off palm and soybean derived fuels from entering the US market.

The EU Commission is to launch an investigation whether producers of Argentinian biofuels – predominantly soy methyl ester (SME) – have benefitted from subsidies, according to a log in the EU Official Journal, a move that could lead to higher tariffs on imports.

Exports of used cooking oil from China have nearly trebled in the first nine months of the year compared to the previous corresponding period, reaching 217,206 mt from January through September versus 75,434 mt in the previous nine months.

The UK government this week earmarked £340 million to build a national charging network as it seeks to reduce its greenhouse gas emissions, and said it would allow self-driving vehicles on the road by 2021, but it failed to pass measures that would have boosted ethanol use in the country’s 36 million road vehicles.

The lead committee steering an EU bill that seeks to deepen bloc-wide biofuels and renewable energy targets will later this month attempt to broker a compromise between factions of the European Parliament over how tough fresh targets should be, whether nations should have individual targets and whether to allow crop-based fuels.

The US National Biodiesel Board has written to President Trump to praise his support of the Renewable Fuel Standard, decry complaints from the US refining sector and call for the Environmental Protection Agency’s 2018 and 2019 production volume target proposals to be revised.